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Wildfire Interactive Inc. (A) Change Management Analysis & Solution
HBR Change Management Solutions
Innovation & Entrepreneurship Case Study | George Foster, Jason Luther
Case Study Description
It was June 2011, and Alain Chuard and Victoria Ransom reflected on their history as founders of Wildfire Interactive Inc. (Wildfire). Originally called Promotion Builder, Wildfire had evolved from an in-house marketing solution used by the duo's adventure travel company to a multi-platform software program used by thousands of businesses globally. The Wildfire product enabled these customers to develop customized social-media marketing campaigns composed of video and essay competitions, user-generated contests, quizzes, and coupons. Users could then push these promotions to their websites or social networks, such as Facebook, hi5, and LinkedIn. Through this evolution, the team contended with a myriad of difficulties, including attracting talent, navigating international markets, and building and scaling operations. In particular, obstacles associated with cultural differences and geographical distance made it challenging for the company to maintain effective operations overseas. Moreover, relative to its competitors, Wildfire was substantially under-funded and under-marketed. This made it difficult for the founders to decide when the company should either accept or turn away lucrative-yet demanding-high-profile customers. Chuard and Ransom were now at another critical decision point in the organization's lifecycle. Wildfire had traditionally been a campaign-based product. Under this model, Wildfire was offered to customers for an initial fee plus a per-day charge, the size of which was dependent upon the feature set chosen by the customer. Recent pressures from investors and consumers, however, had pushed the founders to consider a transition to a subscription-based platform that would provide timeline and stream management, analytics, and page-management functionality. Whereas the founders knew that transforming business models could have various positive effects for Wildfire, implementing the change would also inherently alter the company and its product
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What is Change Management Definition & Process? Why transformation efforts fail? What are the Change Management Issues in Wildfire Interactive Inc. (A) case study?
According to John P. Kotter – Change Management efforts are the major initiatives an organization undertakes to either boost productivity, increase product quality, improve the organizational culture, or reverse the present downward spiral that the company is going through.
Sooner or later every organization requires change management efforts because without reinventing itself organization tends to lose out in the competitive market environment. The competitors catch up with it in products and service delivery, disruptors take away the lucrative and niche market positioning, or management ends up sitting on its own laurels thus missing out on the new trends, opportunities and developments in the industry.
What are the John P. Kotter - 8 Steps of Change Management?
Eight Steps of Kotter's Change Management Execution are -
- 1. Establish a Sense of Urgency
- 2. Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition
- 3. Create a Vision
- 4. Communicate the Vision
- 5. Empower Others to Act on the Vision
- 6. Plan for and Create Short Term Wins
- 7. Consolidate Improvements and Produce More Change
- 8. Institutionalize New Approaches
Are Change Management efforts easy to implement? What are the challenges in implementing change management processes?
According to authorlist Change management efforts are absolutely essential for the surviving and thriving of the organization but they are also extremely difficult to implement. Some of the biggest obstacles in implementing change efforts are –
- Change management is often a lengthy, time consuming, and resource consuming process. Managements try to avoid them because they reflect negatively on the short term financial balance sheet of the organization.
- Change efforts create an environment of uncertainty in the organization that impacts not only the productivity in the organization but also the level of trust in the organization.
- Change efforts are often made by new leaders because they are chosen by board to do so. These leaders often have less trust among the workforce compare to the people with whom they were already working with over the years.
- Change management efforts are made when the organization is in dire need and have fewer resources. This creates silos protection mentality within the organization.
- Change efforts are often targeted at making fundamental aspects in the business – operations and culture. Change management disrupts are status quo thus face opposition from both within and outside the organization.
How you can apply Change Management Principles to Wildfire Interactive Inc. (A) case study?
Leaders can implement Change Management efforts in the organization by following the “Eight Steps Method of Change Management” by John P. Kotter.
Step 1 - Establish a sense of urgency
What are areas that require urgent change management efforts in the “ Wildfire Interactive Inc. (A) “ case study. Some of the areas that require urgent changes are – organizing sales force to meet competitive realities, building new organizational structure to enter new markets or explore new opportunities. The leader needs to convince the managers that the status quo is far more dangerous than the change efforts.
Step 2 - Form a powerful guiding coalition
As mentioned earlier in the paper, most change efforts are undertaken by new management which has far less trust in the bank compare to the people with whom the organization staff has worked for long period of time. New leaders need to tap in the talent of the existing managers and integrate them in the change management efforts. This will for a powerful guiding coalition that not only understands the urgency of the situation but also has the trust of the employees in the organization. If the team able to explain at the grass roots level what went wrong, why organization need change, and what will be the outcomes of the change efforts then there will be a far more positive sentiment about change efforts among the rank and file.
Step 3 - Create a vision
The most critical role of the leader who is leading the change efforts is – creating and communicating a vision that can have a broader buy-in among employees throughout the organization. The vision should not only talk about broader objectives but also about how every little change can add up to the improvement in the overall organization.
Step 4 - Communicating the vision
Leaders need to use every vehicle to communicate the desired outcomes of the change efforts and how each employee impacted by it can contribute to achieve the desired change. Secondly the communication efforts need to answer a simple question for employees – “What it is in for the them”. If the vision doesn’t provide answer to this question then the change efforts are bound to fail because it won’t have buy-in from the required stakeholders of the organization.
Step 5 -Empower other to act on the vision
Once the vision is set and communicated, change management leadership should empower people at every level to take decisions regarding the change efforts. The empowerment should follow two key principles – it shouldn’t be too structured that it takes away improvisation capabilities of the managers who are working on the fronts. Secondly it shouldn’t be too loosely defined that people at the execution level can take it away from the desired vision and objectives.
Wildfire Interactive Inc. (A) PESTEL / PEST / STEP & Porter Five Forces Analysis
Step 6 - Plan for and create short term wins
Initially the change efforts will bring more disruption then positive change because it is transforming the status quo. For example new training to increase productivity initially will lead to decrease in level of current productivity because workers are learning new skills and way of doing things. It can demotivate the employees regarding change efforts. To overcome such scenarios the change management leadership should focus on short term wins within the long term transformation. They should carefully craft short term goals, reward employees for achieving short term wins, and provide a comprehensive understanding of how these short term wins fit into the overall vision and objectives of the change management efforts.
Step 7 - Consolidate improvements and produce more change
Short term wins lead to renewed enthusiasm among the employees to implement change efforts. Management should go ahead to put a framework where the improvements made so far are consolidated and more change efforts can be built on the top of the present change efforts.
Step 8 - Institutionalize new approaches
Once the improvements are consolidated, leadership needs to take steps to institutionalize the processes and changes that are made. It needs to stress how the change efforts have delivered success in the desired manner. It should highlight the connection between corporate success and new behaviour. Finally organization management needs to create organizational structure, leadership, and performance plans consistent with the new approach.
Is change management a process or event?
What many leaders and managers at the Wildfire Chuard fails to recognize is that – Change Management is a deliberate and detail oriented process rather than an event where the management declares that the changes it needs to make in the organization to thrive. Change management not only impact the operational processes of the organization but also the cultural and integral values of the organization.
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